Democracy is a form of government where the opinion of the common citizen is taken into consideration in view of the impact that framing of new laws has on their everyday lives. The democratic state protects the citizen from calamity because essentially the democratic government is supposed to be an extension of the common citizen. This, of course is the ideal state.
As in the case of any pure idea put forth, e.g Christianity, some individuals take it upon themselves to modify and practice a horrendous, mutated version, because the masters know better than you. According to the self-appointed masters, God & Jesus consider you to be too insignificant for direct communication. Apparently they’ll only talk to you via the priest master. In the same way, you, the common man, do not know what’s good for you, hence you need ruling masters who will be appearing to fill their pockets from the state treasury but they’re supposedly working for your benefit according to some convoluted form of governance.
The myriad of malaise affecting a democratic state includes corruption, dynasty and merging of superstition and governance. It might be interesting to note that the birth of the Old Testament lies in surrounding areas of the Fertile Crescent where the population was growing too large to control, about 6000 to 8000 years ago. Hence, the invisible Father in heaven came into being, who will cast lightning on you unless you obey Him and as an extension, your God-appointed ruler. You get a pass to heaven provided you don’t question your heavenly king. It took aeons to dissociate state and religion although efforts are still on to merge it again, as shown by the Hindutva ideology practiced by BJP in India and the Bible belt in U.S.A.
Women suffrage movements are a comparatively recent phenomenon. The weak gender was thought incapable of making decisions, only considered to be homemakers and still are in many parts of the world. Saudi women will have to wait till 2015 to get their right to vote. Interestingly, God is always thought of as male even though it is only the females that give birth to life. The masters know what the formless God looks like, because they constructed the Almighty in the first place. Following is an alternate depiction of God, Alanis Moirsette in Dogma. Check out awesomely annoyed Professor Snape too(rofl).
We’ll tackle political dynasty in some other faraway post. Next item on the agenda is corruption. Anna Hazare held the attention of the entire country with his fast on the Jan Lokpal Bill. This disenchantment with the ruling class had been building up for a long time and finally boiled over. The weekly magazine, Frontline proclaimed that Gandhi would never have supported any form of Satyagraha in an independent India. Well, he neither would have taken a liking to the amount of extra-governmental payola being procured by government officials, ironically in offices with Gandhi’s portrait hung prominently above on the wall.
The ‘spasm’ in the post title refers not just to the illness of our democracy but also to the sudden bout of sickness that affects our ruling masters when they’re found guilty of malpractice and send to jail. They are as healthy as a horse when there is no chance of prosecution. These healthy masters stand for election after election with a plastic smile embedded into their ever so made up faces, yet when it comes to jail-time, they’re beset with all sorts of disorders ranging from dementia to kidney failures.
Get well soon, masters. Shortly, the treasury will be ripe for looting come election time.
Introspection Junction 